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Cruel and Unusual - The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment (Paperback)
Loot Price: R590
Discovery Miles 5 900
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Cruel and Unusual - The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment (Paperback)
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Loot Price R590
Discovery Miles 5 900
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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The true and gripping account of the nine-year struggle by a small
band of lawyers to abolish the death penalty in the United States.
Its new edition features a 2011 Foreword by death penalty author
Evan Mandery of CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as
well as a new Preface by the author. The mission, plotted out over
deli sandwiches in New York's Central Park in the early 1960s,
seemed as impossible then as going to the moon: abolish capital
punishment in every state. The approach would fight a war on
multiple fronts, using multiple strategies. The people would be
dedicated, bright, unsure, unpopular, and fascinating. This book is
their personal history: not only the cases and the arguments before
courts, the death row inmates and their victims, the judges and
politicians urging law and order - this is the true account of the
real-life lawyers from the inside. The United States indeed went to
the moon, and a few years later the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the
death penalty unconstitutional. The victory was long-sought and
sweet, and the pages of this book vividly let the reader live the
struggle and the victory. And while the abolition eventually became
as impermanent as the nation's presence on the moon, these
dedicated attorneys certainly made a difference. This is their
story. As Evan Mandery writes in his new Foreword, "In these pages,
Meltsner lays bare every aspect of his and his colleagues'
thinking. You will read how they handicapped their chances, which
arguments they thought would work (you may be surprised), and what
they thought of the Supreme Court justices who would decide the
crucial cases. You will come to understand what they perceived to
be the basis for support for the death penalty, and, with
Meltsner's unflinching honesty, what they perceived to be the
inconsistencies in their position." Mandery concludes: "It is my
odd lot in life to have read almost every major book ever written
about the death penalty in America. This is the best and the most
important. Every serious scholar who wants to advance an argument
about capital punishment in the United States - whether it is
abolitionist or in favor of the death penalty, or merely a tactical
assessment - cites this book. It is open and supremely accessible."
And the author's "constitutional vision was years ahead of its
time. His book is timeless." Part of the Legal History &
Biography Series from Quid Pro Books, the new editions (in print
and ebook formats) feature embedded pagination from previous
editions, allowing continuity in all new formats and across all
prior printings. This book has been adopted in many classes in
colleges and law schools, but it is not written just for lawyers
and students - it is not burdened with legal jargon and heavy legal
analysis. It is accessible to a wide audience and tells the
personal stories of the people involved, as well as examining the
strategies and the legal and political nuances of death penalty
litigation in the United States.
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